The Case of a Laggy Nexus 7

Not too long ago I picked up a Nexus 7 Android tablet so I could test out my Pebble smartwatch (although the Samsung Galaxy Express has primarily taken over that duty) but in the short time that I have had this tablet it has really started to slow down to woeful speeds. Booting up would take at least a minute or even more and even launching and swapping between apps would be anything less than snappy.

So much for Project Butter, eh?

After a little research, it seems that I am not alone with these concerns and it appears that the Nexus 7 does not execute TRIM commands on its internal storage. In a nutshell, TRIM is a command that is used on solid state drives to properly empty memory cells that are no longer used by the filesystem (i.e. files have been deleted or moved elsewhere). Emptying memory cells at the time you actually need them is not a great idea as it can cause a bottleneck which ultimately slows everything down. Allowing your device to free up this memory properly whilst the storage device is not being heavily utilised means that you will largely avoid this performance degradation issue.

Anyway, I have found an app on the Google Play store called LagFix which will manually run the TRIM command for you across the various volumes in your Android device. However, you will need to root your device which may also mean that you will have to unlock your bootloader. On some devices, unlocking your bootloader means you will have to wipe your device so you will have to backup your apps and data beforehand unless you don’t mind reinstalling from scratch. You can use the Nexus Root Toolkit to help you out if you have a Nexus device.

Anyway, I have done all of that so I will see how it goes and report back my findings but my Nexus 7 does seem snappier for the time being but I may attribute that largely to wiping the device until further notice.